Zillow to buy mortgage lender to help its home-flipping business

Zillow Group Inc. started buying and selling homes this year. Now it plans to write mortgages, too.

The home-listings website operator is acquiring Mortgage Lenders of America, an Overland Park, Kansas-based lender, Zillow said in a statement Monday. The terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.

Zillow, which also reported its second-quarter results Monday, has been building out a program in which home sellers can upload information to its website and solicit an offer for their home. After Zillow buys a house, it makes any repairs and lists it on the open market. Offering mortgages is intended to “streamline the process for people who buy a Zillow-owned home,” Greg Schwartz, president of media and marketplaces, said in the statement.

The move to extend mortgages mirrors earlier efforts by startups Opendoor and Offerpad, which also use information gathered online to make rapid offers on homes. Both companies are also working on ways to make home loans.